Apache Deltacloud 1.0 Supports Open-Source Cloud Interoperability

The Apache Software Foundation recently announced Apache Deltacloud v1.0, which provides several Web service APIs for interacting with cloud service providers in a unified, interoperable manner.

The Apache Deltacloud project comprises many implementations for the most popular clouds offerings and provides client libraries for a wide variety of languages. The project graduated from the Apache incubator program in October 2011.

ASF says Deltacloud contains a cloud abstraction API. The API works as a wrapper around a large number of clouds, abstracting their differences. For every provider there is a driver "speaking" cloud provider's native API. It frees you from dealing with the particulars of each cloud's API, ASF officials said.

"The release of version 1.0 is a logical step in the evolution of the project," said David Lutterkort, vice president of Apache Deltacloud, in a statement. "The native Deltacloud API has reached a level of maturity that makes calling this release 1.0 very appropriate."

Deltacloud provides the API server and drivers necessary for connecting to cloud providers. Deltacloud maintains long-term stability for scripts, tools and applications and backward compatibility across different versions. Using a single API Deltacloud enables management of resources in different clouds.

The Deltacloud server offers three different API frontends: a classic API, based on the API defined by the Deltacloud project itself; a frontend for the Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface standard under development by the Distributed Management Task Force; and now a frontend for the API used by Amazon's EC2.

"The EC2 frontend really just started as a 'let's see how hard this can be' prototype - we found that it was actually quite easy to add that additional API to Deltacloud, Lutterkort added. The Deltacloud codebase is very well suited to translating between cloud API's, making it possible for clients using one API to talk to clouds offering a completely different one. Deltacloud makes it possible for clients to use the EC2 API against a VMware vSphere installation or against OpenStack; similarly, it allows clients to use the CIMI API with Amazon's Web Services. It goes a long way towards avoiding lock-in on the cloud API level."